The Augments
In the Arik Soong's Augments In The Augments '' |image= |series= |production=40358-082 (406) |producer(s)= |story= |script=Michael Sussman |director=LeVar Burton |imdbref=tt0572248 |guests=Brent Spiner as Doctor Arik Soong, Alec Newman as Malik, Abby Brammell as Persis, Richard Riehle as Doctor Jeremy Lucas, Mark Rolston as Captain Magh and Adam Grimes as Lokesh |previous_production=Cold Station 12 |next_production=The Forge |episode=ENT S04E06 |airdate=12 November 2004 |previous_release=Cold Station 12 |next_release=The Forge |story_date(s)= 27 May 2154 |previous_story=Cold Station 12 |next_story=The Forge }} =Summary= Previously Borderland In May 2154, a pair of genetically enhanced humans, referred to as "Augments", leave their home planet and take control of a Klingon Bird-of-Prey warship after killing the crew. Amid threats and protests by the Klingons, Starfleet tasks the newly refurbished Enterprise to stop the culprits, with the assistance of disgraced scientist Doctor Arik Soong, imprisoned for stealing augmented embryos, who soon recognises his augments are responsible for the actions on board the Klingon vessel, and convinces Archer that he will be able to order his "children" to stand down without a fight. Following attacks by Orion slevers, The Bird-of-Prey approaches Enterprise and docks. The Augment leader Malik requests the release of Soong from the brig—Archer refuses, but Malik forces him to comply. With Enterprise disabled, Soong announces that they now need to go and retrieve the remaining thousands of Augment embryos. Cold Station 12 After the escape of Doctor Soong and the Augments, Captain Archer and his crew proceed to the coordinates Soong had provided earlier in the mission. On Trialis IV, the away team find an abandoned building where the young Augments were raised and schooled by "father" Soong, and capture a banished member of the Augments named Udar. Nicknamed "Smike" by his Augment siblings after a handicapped character from the comic novel Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, who is taken to Enterprise, where analysis reveals that while his DNA is similar to the other Augments, he has none of their enhanced abilities (except for superior hearing). Meanwhile, Soong and the Augments use a captured Denobulan medical ship to enter the medical facility called Cold Station 12 (C-12). They soon overpower security and capture the scientists there, including its chief medical officer, Doctor Jeremy Lucas (Doctor Phlox's Interspecies Medical Exchange counterpart). After Malik uses Phlox's friendship to finally coerce the security codes from Lucas (by threatening to expose him to a pathogen as well) Soong, who had previously stolen 19 genetically enhanced and frozen embryos from C-12, is now able to access the remaining 1,800, a carry-over from the Eugenics Wars. Soong and the Augments then escape, but not before Malik kills Smike, helps himself to a number of pathogen samples, and sets the viral containment fields to fail. Conclusion Captain Archer restores stasis around the central compound, and is beamed from space to safety, with the Enterprise in pursuit of Soong, Malik, and the Augments on their stolen Bird of Prey. Soong and the Augments arrive in Klingon space where he shares his plan: Soong intends to hide out in a region where Starfleet would have trouble tracking them down. Malik objects to Soong's plan, noting that Khan Noonien Singh also ran away on the SS Botany Bay. In pursuit of the Augments, Enterprise arrives in Klingon space having faked a Klingon warp signature. Soong releases a hostage on a Denobulan shuttle into a gas giant, forcing the Enterprise to abandon their pursuit and mount a rescue operation. Escaping, Malik proposes a new plan: trigger a war between Starfleet and the Klingons as a distraction by firing a pathogen-filled torpedo at a Klingon colony. He reasons that Starfleet will be too busy fighting the Klingons to hunt down the Augments. Soong will have nothing to do with Malik's genocidal proposal. On the Enterprise, Commander T'Pol asks Commander Tucker about the distance between them after her recent arranged marriage (Home), and he tells her he has come to terms with their new relationship. Back on the Bird of Prey, Soong works on a way to remove aggressive behavior from the unborn Augment embryos. Malik, concerned by Soong's plan to hide from Starfleet and his tampering with the embryos, leads a mutiny which confines Soong to his quarters. With the help of Persis, Soong leaves the ship in an escape pod. Enterprise, once again in pursuit, detects the pod and brings Soong on board. Heading towards the Klingon colony in high warp in an attempt to stop Malik's plan, the Klingons detect their ship. Enterprise is forced to disable a Klingon cruiser when it tries to board. Malik kills Persis for her betrayal, and continues with his plan to attack the Klingons. Scans of the Qu'vat colony reveal three main population centers; the torpedo is armed with pathogens and prepared for deployment. The Enterprise arrives late, just after Malik fires the torpedo, but Enterprise destroys it, saving the Klingon colony. Soong helps disable the Klingon ship, hoping to save some of the Augments. However, Malik scuttles the Klingon ship, killing the remaining Augments and the embryos, and transports himself onto Enterprise in an attempt to kill Soong in revenge, but Archer manages to kill Malik first. The Klingons call off their retaliation against Earth, and Soong returns to the Starfleet Detention Center. In custody, he begins to doubt the feasibility of genetically engineering humans and wonders if perfecting artificial life has better prospects for the future. =Errors and Explanations= Nit Central # The Undesirable Augment on Friday, November 12, 2004 - 9:06 pm: So things are still hunky-dorey with the Klingons. I'm still waiting for something bad to happen. Given the events of Enterprise so far, Klingons and humans should become best buddies in 100 years rather than bitter enemies. SPOILER ALERT! The events of Affliction and Divergence might have something to do with it. # Why was the Denobulan pilot still on the Klingon ship? Why didn't Soong leave her on Cold Station 12. (I thought I even saw her locked up with the station's personnel in the last episode, but I'm not sure so I won't count that as a nit.) He clearly did not expect Enterprise to be able to follow him. Was he just going to toss her out of an airlock later? Malik is keeping her as a hostage. # In Star Trek VI, Chekov says that they must respond to a Klingon outpost personally because a universal translator would be recognized. Here, Archer uses a universal translator without incident. Perhaps they can't recognize it in this century. Or they made a deliberate effort to improve detection of a translation device BECAUSE of Archer using one here. # Soong tells the Augments that there are two habitable planets in the Briar Patch. Now if there are two habitable planets, why did the Ba'ku choose the one that had bizarre concentrations of radiation in its rings? What if there had been dangerous side effects? At that point, the damage to their bodies meant they were too desperate to care! # LUIGI NOVI on Friday, November 12, 2004 - 8:23 pm: In the beginning of Act 1, the crew lament that they can’t follow Soong into Klingon space because the Klingons will detect them. Why don’t they just tell the Klingons that the Bird of Prey Soong and the Augments stole is now in their space, and let them go after it themselves? 1) The Klingons may not restrict themselves to taking on the Augment’s ship. 2) It may not be possible for the Klingons to avoid falsely identifing one of their own ships as the one carrying the Augments. # In Act 1, after Archer returns to the bridge from sickbay, and Trip tells him the modifications to the warp coil are completed, Archer orders Travis to take them to the Klingon border at Warp 4. Given how time is of the essence, why not Warp 5? They don’t want to risk overloading the coil unless it is absolutely necessary. # Huh? So Trip’s parents are actually alive??? What the hell? Trip seem to indicate in the beginning of Home that because his sister and entire home town were gone, that he had no one left, which is one reason he went to Vulcan with T’Pol in that episode. But now he and T’Pol mention in the second scene of Act 2 that they are alive and living in a new home in Mississippi?? If that’s true, then why did Trip act as if he had nowhere to go in Home? After a year away from Earth, wouldn’t he have wanted to spend some time with them? Or is he on really bad terms with them? If so, I would’ve preferred mention of this in that episode. Perhaps he couldn’t face seeing them at that time. # Soong escapes from the Bird of Prey in an escape pod in the closing scene of Act 2, but Sleeping Dogs established that Klingons do not have escape pods because they believe that having their lives saved when in danger brings them dishonor. As stated elsewhere, the Klingons probably retrofitted escape pods to their ships after the Sleeping Dogs incident. # LUIGI NOVI on Friday, November 12, 2004 - 8:33 pm: When Archer is beamed from space onto the transporter pad in the beginning of Act 1, he is covered in frost. This is obviously the creators' way of indicating how cold it is in space, but since space is a vaccuum, where would the moisture needed to form frost come from? The Undesirable Augment on Saturday, November 13, 2004 - 3:52 pm: I can think of two possibilities: 1. any moisture inside the tube from which he was sucked (or is that blown? Soong better get to work on that android so he can fix my grammar). 2. Any moisture (such as sweat) that was on Archer's skin. # LUIGI NOVI on Friday, November 12, 2004 - 8:52 pm: You really have to wonder at how smart these supposedly “perfect” humans are. Supposedly they have genetically engineered intelligence, but Malik seems to think that destroying a Klingon colony will cause the Klingons to go to war with Earth, but not find out who the specific humans were that attacked the colony, and go after them in particular. Why does this not occur to him? Jesse on Saturday, November 13, 2004 - 5:51 pm: I didn't really have a problem with this. It fit with what I believe to be the general character of an aggressive Klingon. Remember, it was Sisko and the DS9 personnel who specifically attacked their fleet in Way of the Warrior, but this action led to a general war in which numerous Federation vessels were attacked. I could see Klingons--especially these "warrior-caste" Klingons--to not be very interested in whether "official" humans or "renegade" humans attacked them. In fact, I could see them accusing Earth of engineering the plot. As an aside, the Romulans seem to feel the same way. On two occasions (Star Trek VI and TNG The Mind's Eye) they back a plan to have a rogue agent assassinate a Klingon target. In both cases they feel that the Klingons will not make the distinction that the Federation had no official role in the process. LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, November 13, 2004 - 11:45 pm: Because in both cases, the patsies were Starfleet officers fairly high up in the Starfleet hierarchy, giving the strong appearance of Starfleet involvement (especially in the case of Kirk and Bones). The same does not hold true for the Augments. In addition, the Klingons did NOT assume Starfleet was responsible for Kirk and Bones’ alleged actions. They simply arrested the two of them, and tried them alone, never making any accusation against Starfleet or the Federation for their actions. Rather than disproving my point, this example you came up with proves it, and disproves yours. LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, November 13, 2004 - 11:45 pm: So these Klingons are so stupid that they don’t acknowledge the concept of criminals or rogues? I don’t buy it. To each his own. Josh M on Sunday, November 14, 2004 - 7:31 pm: Unless they want a war with Earth and will take even the flimsiest excuse to justify it. # Keith Alan Morgan on Saturday, November 13, 2004 - 3:11 am: How did the Augments hear of the Botany Bay? IIRC Space Seed mentioned no such rumour & only deduced that the crew were from the Eugenics war because 80 or 90 supermen were unnaccounted for at the end of the Eugenics War. They probably worked it out from the available facts ie the unaccounted superman and the disapperance of the Botany Bay. # elwood on Saturday, November 13, 2004 - 12:52 pm: Why didn't Soong tell them that there is the captured Bird of Prey, about which the Klingons should know, about to realise the deseases on the colony and they must be stopped? He may not have been believed! # Summerfield on Saturday, November 13, 2004 - 5:19 pm: When Archer and Arik had their conversation at the end, I wondered where Noonien is going to come from. Does Arik have a son or daughter they didn't mention? Josh M on Sunday, November 14, 2004 - 7:31 pm: I think that that was implied by his "future generations" comment. # goodolpete on Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - 10:49 am: Did anyone find it curious that when the plague filled torpedoes were fired, they had to travel round to the other side of the planet, thus allowing time for the Enterprise to destroy them? This makes sense, as the Augments are effectively hiding behind the planet, making it harder for the defenses in the target area to locate and fire on them. # Superior shows breed superior nitpickers on Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 7:13 pm: So... Destroying the biowarhead saved the planet? No pathogens survived? (I was expecting the destruction of the torpedo to disperse the germs more effectively. That'd be wonderful irony to have Enterprise make the situation worse by trying to help. A misunderstanding on that order is precisely what needs to happen to start the decades of "unremitting hostility"/cold war between Klingons and Humans.) Josh M on Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 7:20 pm: I assume that the torpedo exploded well above the atmosphere and wouldn't survive entry. Category:EpisodesCategory:Enterprise